The night after her walk with Wynyard, Aurea slept but little; she was thinking, and wondering, and happy. As she dressed, she was unusually abstracted, and when Norris began her _coiffure_, she did not as usual read the Psalms for the day, but sat with crossed hands in a trance of meditation, whilst her maid brushed her soft and lustrous locks. After twice clearing her throat with energetic significance, Norris began-- “So Mrs. Ramsay is letting the house for six months, I hear?” “Yes,” was the languid reply. “To a sort of county inspector; the chauffeur fellow showed him in--_he_ has a finger in every one’s pie.” “I don’t know what you mean, Norris.” “Well, anyway, he did a lot for Mrs. Ramsay,” she answered, with significance. “He was in and out at all hours--some think he is good-looking--and ladies like him.” “What ladies?” “Well, now, Miss Aurea, you know I don’t intend any harm, but the talk is that your aunt, Miss Susan, makes too great a pet of him. Why, half his day he’s helping her in the garden or potting plants in the greenhouse; and she lends him books, and talks and makes a fuss of him, just as if he were in her own station.” Norris’ speech was so rapid, such a cataract of words, that her young mistress had not been able to interrupt; at last she broke in-- “How wicked of people!” endeavouring to wrench her hair away. “Poor Aunt Susan--so good, unselfish, and kind--not even spared! Oh, it’s too abominable! I’m ashamed of you, Norrie; how can you listen to such things?” “Indeed, Miss Aurea, I said just what you said, and that Miss Susan was too old; but they say there is no fool like an old one--and some folk _will_ gossip. And there was Mrs. Lambert, who married a boy that was at school with her own son. You know there’s not much to talk of here--now the Ramsays are gone. As for the young man, as I told you to-night, _I_ never held a good opinion of him; he’s too secret and too off-hand to please _me_. He goes out of a night for exercise, so he says, walking the country till daybreak; but that’s just a blind. Who is he with?--tell me that?” Aurea remembered, with a sudden stinging pang, how she and her father had overtaken him one evening escorting Dilly Topham. Dilly had been crying, and she was holding his hand! “Why, I saw him myself in the theatre at Brodfield,” resumed Norris, “and he had a young woman with him--so he had.” “And why not?” bravely demanded Aurea, but her lips were white. “The two were in a box, and he sat back--but _I_ knew him--and afterwards they walked together to the Coach and Horses Hotel, the best in Brodfield. She was tall and slim, and wore a long coat and black lace scarf over her head--I call it very bold in the public street.” “One of his friends,” explained Aurea, with a stoical indifference her heart belied; and to cut short any further disclosures, she released herself from her handmaiden’s clutches and knelt down to say her prayers.